This paper explores James Buchanan’s contributions to urban economics and urban public finance. Buchanan never self-identified as an “urban economist,” so his contributions to the field tend to blend into his broader body of work on public finance and externalities. However, in a series of...

This paper describes James M. Buchanan’s analysis of human capital concepts in a class paper that he wrote in 1946 titled “Federalism: One Barrier to Labor Mobility.” The paper described how federal financing of human capital investments impeded labor mobility and formed the basis for his...

A series of recent reviews of the depression of 1920-21 by Austrian School and libertarian economists have argued that the downturn demonstrates the poverty of Keynesian policy recommendations. However, these writers misrepresent important characteristics of the 1920-21 downturn, understating...